Still from the film 1972 film "L'Ordre," showing a man with leprosy  in a suit smoking a cigarette..
Screenings Readings

M as in Maladie screening & Dodie Bellamy reading

THU JUL 8, 2021 7 PM PDT

Made in L.A. artist and Semiotext(e) coeditor Hedi El Kholti restages an evening from his screening series From A to Z, held at the Mandrake Bar in Los Angeles from 2006 to 2009. The series is based on Gilles Deleuze From A to Z, journalist Claire Parnet’s intimate documentary interview of the terminally ill philosopher (and Parnet’s lover) Gilles Deleuze. In the film, they discuss philosophical concepts evoked by letters of the alphabet; El Kholti’s series paired each letter’s segment with a selection of films.

In this online presentation of M as in Maladie, El Kholti combines an excerpt from the Deleuze interview with two powerful works centered around leper colonies: Iranian filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad’s poetic documentary The House is Black and Jean-Daniel Pollet’s L’Ordre. Preceded by writer Dodie Bellamy reading from her semi-autobiographical book of stories and essays When the Sick Rule the World, the screening encourages a meditation on illness, alienation, fragility, and death, leading us to question the qualities that humanize—and dehumanize—individuals when confronted with their own mortality. Film introduction by Made in L.A. cocurator Lauren Mackler.

Film program

  • Gilles Deleuze From A to Z, “M as in Maladie,” video, 1988, 29 mins
  • L'Ordre, dir. Jean-Daniel Pollet, 35mm, 1973, 44 mins
  • The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 35mm, 1963, 22 mins

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